Having a tough time with weaken questions.

SammyJD1

Does anyone how I can improve on weaken questions? I really having a tough time with them.

I understand you have to weaken the support the premise gives the conclusion, but how? Am I questioning the premises? Is there something I'm looking for? Do I say, what if it's something else?

How do I weaken the support? In what ways???

holmesvc

How do you feel about strengthening questions? I tend to look for the answers that strengthen the argument and eliminate those. Usually 3/5 choices strengthen the argument in some way. 1/5 are completely unrelated to the argument and then the last one is your correct answer choice.

jackmdexter

@holmesvc said:
How do you feel about strengthening questions? I tend to look for the answers that strengthen the argument and eliminate those. Usually 3/5 choices strengthen the argument in some way. 1/5 are completely unrelated to the argument and then the last one is your correct answer choice.

Seconding this. Find the conclusion in the stimulus, take a look at the answer choices, and ask yourself which of the answer choices make the argument MORE bulletproof. In the process of looking for what strengthens the argument, you'll come across an AC that weakens the argument instead (what you're looking for!) Same methodology can be used for Strengthening questions by looking for the weakening ACs instead - look for the opposite.